Pieces
by PowerOfFail
Summary: "They're a mess," Sothis's voice whispered in his mind, "This class you've chosen; but, I suppose they're our mess now, your father's right about that." A short one-shot on Byleth's experience with the dysfunctional, and tragic, Blue Lions.


When Rhea had asked Byleth to choose a house, he had at first been uncertain. The three leaders that he had already met each seemed respectable and he wondered at what kind of allies they could develop into given time. However, once he began walking the Monastery in search of learning about their companions, he found himself drawn to the Blue Lions. He could not immediately identify the reason for this endearment, as some of them came off prickly or he could sense that they would be troublesome from a mile away.

Yet when he reflected on his first steps into the Monastery, he realized it was in the past times that the houses chose as groups that made his decision for him. The Black Eagles seemed a studious bunch, alert and attentive if not a touch competitive. The Golden Deer appeared laid back, though they had hung on every word Claude said - though whether that was to his natural charisma, general respect, or propriety, Byleth was not sure.

The Blue Lions spent a majority of their time in the training grounds, generally working diligently to improve their combat abilities (or, in some cases, irritating his housemates). Byleth sensed a fracture in the house as he watched them scattered around the grounds - a wedge in the comradery that, while not undetectable in the other houses, was hardly masked beneath the surface of their tepid interactions.

_This discordant house_, he had thought to himself, _is likely to get themselves killed if they walk into a real battle like this_.

So he made his choice and pledged to Rhea that he would instruct the Blue Lions in the ways of battle and in the tenants of faith (though he had to admit to himself that he was largely unqualified to instruct the latter). He introduced himself to his new students, and the semester began in earnest.

In those first few weeks, Byleth thought that perhaps he had been mistaken about his initial readings of the Blue Lions. They showed up punctually to every lesson, followed his instruction assiduously, and treated each other with polite, if at times strained, regard. When he invited them to tea or visited them around the Monastery on his days off, the students were jovial and welcoming (mostly - even when he was being pleasant, those words could never quite describe Felix).

Then the cracks began to show themselves. One day when Byleth arrived to class early to prepare for lessons, he found Annette asleep at her desk surrounded by a pile of books. Judging by the dark rings under her eyes, he assumed she'd only recently closed her eyes and had been there all night. When he gently prodded her, she woke with a start and a fluster of apologies before darting out to nab breakfast before class began and the others arrived.

The next day, Sylvain wandered into class with a blossoming bruise on his cheek from an intense rejection (or breakup?) and laughed it off like it didn't hurt, like he didn't care, like it was a prize for his apathy. When Mercades asked to heal it, he brushed her aside with a chuckle and said it would only make him more appealing if he called it a battle wound. Ingrid looked angry, but before she could start, Dimitri told him off and asked that he, "Please not be so crass in front of the Professor." Felix rolled his eyes and called Sylvain careless, in a scathing tone of voice, and that was the end of the discussion, but Byleth could not help but notice the touch of fear that had colored Ingrid's face. He filed the reaction away to ponder later and wondered if he simply hadn't been paying close enough attention to his students.

After the incident, he started watching their interactions more closely, from Felix and Dimitri's fierce training sessions - that left the two of them bruised and bloody more often than not, that came across more as serious skirmishes than healthy sparring bouts, that one time ended in Felix snarking at his prince, "Stay away from me, Boar, unless you want this training ground to become a battlefield," before storming off to find Mercades, that left Dimitri almost-mournful - to even more erosive, destructive tendencies.

He noticed the way that Ingrid threw resentful glares at Dedue across the dining hall as if he did not belong beside her prince and future king, the way Annette worked herself to the bone without ever giving up, the way Ashe was so thoughtful and considerate that he put more effort into helping others than taking care of himself, the way that Mercades doted on all of them like little siblings she was afraid to lose, the way Sylvain hardly cared about anything including the girls he dated, the way Felix spent all his time alone, the way Dedue could not leave Dimitri as if he thought that if he turned away he would lose his prince (or himself?), and the way that Dimitri was too stiff when he interacted with his classmates as if he was trying to figure out how to be human.

Then the real missions and the killing began and the cracks became deeper. Annette was too unsure of herself in the field and quickly became a liability, which Ashe tried to remedy by flinging himself in front of an axe meant for her. Dedue tossed aside his own safety for Dimitri's, Sylvain and Felix were both headstrong and reckless in different ways - the former carelessly looking for trouble, and the latter refusing anyone's help. Dimitri was competent on the battlefield himself, but his musings on justice and death gave him little rest outside of it.

Byleth also began to learn more about his students. Before taking the axe for Annette, Ashe had picked a lock on an old chest in the field on their first mission without much effort. When pressed, he admitted to being a thief growing up in order to provide for his siblings before being adopted into a lower noble family and that while he would never return to that life, he didn't leave the skills he'd learned behind. It was a grim story, but not unheard of.

When Lonato rebelled, the history of the Tragedy of Duscur made itself known, and Byleth came to understand Felix's anger, Dimitri's sorrow, Ingrid's resentment, and Dedue's loyalty a bit more. They had all lost too much in that incident to come back out of it whole, and their bickering showed that little had been done to resolve the hurt that came from it. The rebellion seemed to only further deepen the wounds that had never healed from the Tragedy as the students came face to face with ghosts of their past and it even wrought fresh scars on Ashe, the sweet boy who just wanted to be good, who was forced to fight his own adoptive father.

Of course, the Lions were given no respite from their tragedy. Soon after the rebellion, Miklan stole the Lance of Ruin and when it came out that he was a disowned Gautier and Sylvain's brother, the redhead dropped his carefree facade and hovered somewhere between apologetic and furious. Byleth offered to let him sit out the mission, just as he had offered to Ashe not a month prior, but like Ashe, Sylvain rejected it. Unlike Ashe, who sought answers, Sylvain swore that he would make up for his brother's trespass. It was the first time Byleth had seen real emotion from him, and was uneasy at the promises that came from his wrath.

Felix avoided his father who had come to the Monastery to address the Lance of Ruin situation in Margrave Gautier's stead while Annette tried desperately to get her own father's attention to no avail which left her in tears. Sylvain was tormented by the act of murdering his brother with his own hands twice - once as a man and again as a beast, and it left a haunted look in his eyes that he was unable to dispel as much as he tried to laugh it away. Ingrid was furious with Sylvain for his recklessness in that battle, which only further deepened the growing crack in their friendship. Dimitri was sleeping less and less, guilt weighing on him and following even his waking steps, and Dedue worried himself almost to the point of illness over his prince. Ashe still looked lost from trying to reconcile what had happened with his adoptive father and the others, in their own tragedies, did not think to reach out to him except Mercades, who was trying her best to hold them all together, her dear little siblings. Though, try as she might, she was fracturing, too. Her encounter with the Death Knight during the Goddesses' Right of Rebirth had shaken her more than she was willing to admit.

The Crest system, their fear of the past, and unanswered questions were dogging his house's every move. Byleth watched the cracks deepen further in each of his students and between them with each passing month.

_How long can they go on like this?_ Byleth wondered to himself as the cracks became pieces and began to fall apart.

* * *

"You've chosen a tough house, that much is true." Jeralt admitted with a sigh during a sunny, if brisk, Sunday afternoon. Both of their schedules were clear enough that they had an opportunity to talk over tea - something that happened far too rarely now that they were both engaged in their unrelenting lives at the Monastery. Jeralt rolled one shoulder, stiff from the last mission, and said, "Though it's not like you to get so involved."

Byleth frowned and tilted his head to the side before he responded, "I thought they just needed instruction as a batallion, but I can't just leave them now."

Jeralt grunted at that. He took a thoughtful sip of his tea before he said, "No, I suppose not. They're noble brats, but they're children, and need someone to guide them."

He watched his son over his tea as Byleth took a drink himself and nodded in agreement. The conversation lapsed into silence between them, not an unfamiliar feeling. Byleth allowed himself to continue mulling over the situation in the quiet.

_They're a mess_, Sothis's voice whispered in his mind,_ This class you've chosen; but, I suppose they're our mess now, your father's right about that.  
_  
"Hmm," was all Byleth said in response, earning a quirked eyebrow from his father. 

* * *

The months tumbled on, autumn falling into winter, and Flayn's kidnapping rattled the entire Monastery. Students passed through corridors in fervent huddles, glancing over their shoulders as they went. The second appearance of the Death Knight and his identity being revealed as Jeritza left everyone uneasy, but it was Mercardes it seemed to affect the most. She began jumping slightly at odd sounds and was mournful, though no one knew why.

The Blue Lions trained harder, trying to glue their pieces back together with their own blood and sweat, swearing to protect anyone else those dastardly villains tried to harm. For a time, it seemed that their grief had subsided enough to let them bond over what had happened in the grimly eventful school year, and Byleth was glad at least for that; but, the missions continued, the fighting became fiercer, and the pieces they tried to pick up kept falling with every new horror and Byleth worried that eventually there would be too many for his dear Blue Lions to keep holding.

_They're just children_, Byleth thought to Sothis a few days from the White Heron Cup after a particularly strained training session left the whole house in shambles. Even Mercades and Annette had fallen out over a dispute about who could protect whom, Annette whirling away and disappearing from the training grounds in a hurt huff because her friend had confirmed her own worst fears about herself. _My father is right, they're all just broken children that no one has taken the time to put back together._

Though, when Byleth reflected on it later, he found it strange to consider his students children. Mercades was his senior by a strong four years, and though Dedue was younger, he made such an imposing, quiet figure that towered over Byleth that to an outsider it would seem that he were the professor and not the other way around. Sylvain was nearly Byleth's peer at just a year younger and taller besides, and Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid were not far behind. Only Ashe and Annette were really children, though their eyes carried scars that no child should know.

_You're all just children_. Sothis responded, sounding bored.

* * *

Then it happened. That day at the chapel, that day with the students who were turned into beasts that Byleth and his Blue Lions cut down. That day when even controlling time itself, blessed with the voice and the heart of a goddess, was unable to change what happened.

Sothis called it fate, that if even turning back those precious seconds was unable to save his father, then Jeralt was meant to die. Byleth knew she was right, knew that he had tried literally everything in his powers and hers to save his father, but the failure still stung. He did not know he could feel such pain, such emptiness, such sorrow. He cracked, and the pieces of his soul began to fall among the others'.

With nothing but a sharp dagger, Kronya had made Byleth another broken child of the Blue Lions.

* * *

Edelgard betrayed them. She betrayed them all. All of their hurt, their anger, their suffering was at her feet. She wanted to reshape the world, but the blood price was high. She trampled them in her desperation to climb the rungs to revolution. She caused Dimitri's tragedy, Felix's, Ingrid's. Every consequence that came from her choices left more blood before her. She caused Dedue's tragedy, Annette's tragedy. She controlled the Death Knight, that ghost who haunted Mercades. She incited the rebellion of the Western Church, that hole in Ashe's heart. She had caused Byleth's tragedy. She had killed Jeralt, surely as if Kroyna's dagger was her own.

The war started with the assault on Garrag Mach. Rhea turned into a monster and Byleth fell into darkness.

* * *

When he awoke five years later, when he climbed those stairs choked with blood and ravaged bodies, when he found Dimitri hunched in the shadows, blood falling from him like the last shattered pieces of his soul, he wondered.

He wondered if, when he found the rest of them, would there be enough pieces left to put them all back together?

* * *

**A/N**:  
I've played all four routes of Three Houses, and Blue Lions twice. They were my first choice and I was immediately endeared to them because Nintendo advertised Dimitri's route as "find out his tragic story" (paraphrased). I had no idea that walking into that house would mean finding a cast of completely dysfunctional, lovable, characters. Sometimes, I feel like not enough attention is paid to the fact that they are _such_ an entirely dysfunctional house. I know that the other houses have their own tragedies and sufferings (Edelgard's and Lysithea's come foremost to mind, but Marianne, Raphael, Claude, and Bernadetta aren't to be forgotten), but overall they come across more well-adjusted. Furthermore, I find that a lot of attention is paid to individual or paired dysfunctionality (Dimitri, Dedue, and Felix are often the stars of that scrutiny), but I wanted to study the house as a whole and how they had the power to (and often did) erode each other.

The Blue Lions are honestly just a mess, and I love them for it.


End file.
